Sisters 'The big baggy novel I’ve been waiting for – perfect for a summer holiday' The Times
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Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of six novels, including The Family Clause and Everything I Don't Remember, seven plays, and a collection of short stories and essays. Khemiri is the recipient of a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and numerous other publications. The Sisters is his first book to be written in English. He lives in Brooklyn with his family and teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.A quilt in the winter, a fireplace of embers, a singing kettle, a blazing forest, a steaming bath, a controlled burn - what you hold in your hands generates every kind of heat. There is violence, and some of it burns, but its most consistent and miraculous energy - the energy radiating beneath every sentence of every page - is a kind of geothermal tenderness. Jonas Hassen Khemiri's <i>The Sisters</i> moves generation to generation, neighbour to neighbour, skin to skin, pulse to pulse. <b>If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you</b>
- Tess Gunty, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize-winning author of <i>The Rabbit Hutch,
I try to avoid recommending too many novels whose length could rival a dictionary's. But <b>I've been thinking about <i>The Sisters </i>ever since I finished it</b>, and now that it's out I hope you linger over it, too.
- Joumana Khatib, New York Times
<i>The Sisters </i>is <b>a novel of unsurpassed tenderness</b>. It is about the power of stories, to make and break and finally heal us. Jonas Hassen Khemiri is a born storyteller, of rare and astonishing gifts. <b>Every character </b><b>- every sentence - is startlingly, indubitably alive</b>
- Katie Kitamura, author of <i>Intimacies</i>,
<i>The Sisters </i>made such an impression on me that I started dreaming about Ina, Evelyn and Anastasia and the brilliant structure of this capacious, moving novel. <b>It will remain with me for a long time</b>
- Lara Haworth, author of <i>Monumenta</i>,
<i>The Sisters </i>is <b>a thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love</b>, one that is about the microcosm of the family as much as it is about the bigger world. Jonas Hassen <b>Khemiri is the very rare combination of a deep intellectual and a true storyteller, as smart as he is entertaining. He is an important voice</b>, a curious mind, and a generous teacher to all of us who have tried to imitate him
- Fredrik Backman, author of <i>A Man Called Ove</i>,
<i>The Sisters </i>is <b>a moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life</b>. Jonas Hassen Khemiri ushers you through those developments with humanity and wit and <b>illuminates complex familial intimacies with utter clarity</b>
- Raven Leilani, author of <i>Luster</i>,
<i>The Sisters </i>is <b>a superb novel </b>about the pangs and longings of sibling love, about being Arab in Sweden and Swedish in Tunisia, about the strange stories that sustain us and the long rush of time. Captivating and so full of life - <b>one of those books you live inside and miss when it's over</b>
- Isabella Hammad, author of <i>Enter Ghost</i>,
<i>The Sisters </i>is Jonas Hassen Khemiri's <b>masterpiece</b>, a beautiful double helix of memory and imagination. Folding together Stockholm and New York, time and timelessness, self and other, it is <b>an immersive, wondrous reading experience. Life overflows its pages </b>
- Madeleine Thien, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of <i>Do Not Say We Have Nothing</i>,
<b>An extraordinary achievement </b>. . . this is the novel that I didn't know I was waiting for
- Adam Dalva, editor of Words without Borders,
Momentous . . . I don't waver an instance when I say Jonas Hassen Khemiri is <b>the greatest Swedish lyricist of a century</b>
- Johan Renck, director of <i>Chernobyl</i> and <i>Spaceman</i>,
Spanning over three decades and continents, Khemiri weaves an engaging and intricate tale about generational trauma, curses, loss and love with such ease it's almost provoking. <b>I read it as if my own life depended on the outcome for these sisters</b>. I laughed with them, cried with them, lived with them throughout it all. And when it ended, they stayed with me. <b>It's astonishing that such a complex and epic story can be so easy to devour</b>. One of those stories I wish I could read again for the first time.
- Lisa Ambjörn, writer of the Netflix hit <i>Young Royals</i>,
In Scandinavia, Khemiri is <b>easily one of the most respected and decorated authors of my generation</b>. This book, his seventh, is <b>a classic story about sibling rivalry</b>, and it follows three chaotic and loving sisters over a period of thirty years . . . Khemiri, who is also of Swedish and Tunisian descent, lives and teaches in New York; he's a true citizen of the world, and he captures that experience in an exceptionally vivid way. <b>This is one of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage</b>. At nearly seven hundred pages, the book is quite long, but <b>Khemiri's language is propulsive </b>- <b>it possesses a flow and a tempo that makes you forget that you're reading</b>
- Fredrik Backman, New Yorker
Blending humor and pathos, Khemiri perfectly encapsulates the push and pull of living in two different and sometimes dueling cultures. It's<b> a staggering achievement</b>
Publishers Weekly
<b>I really loved this book</b>. I came to love the characters . . . if someone had cooked up a book in a lab for me, specifically, it would probably resemble this . . . <b>a novel to sink into</b>
- Joumana Khatib, New York Times
This <b>gripping, ambitious novel of love and lineage </b>spans countries and generations
Vulture
For a life-long reader, it's a pleasure to discover how different generations take an old form - family sagas - and find a fresh approach. <b>One of this summer's most buzzed-about novels</b>, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's <i>The Sisters</i>, which features three Swedish-Tunisian siblings, Ina, Evelyn and Anastasia Mikkola, and their life-long friend, a writer called Jonas, divides 732 pages into seven progressively shorter chapters. Khemiri told <i>Publishers Weekly </i>that he "wanted to capture how time feels. It's always speeding up as you age. The first part takes place over a year, then six months, one month, one day, and finally, one minute." <b>The effect is startling; you age along with the Mikkolas, feeling the decades fly by as though it were your own life, your own family memories and experiences going past</b>
- Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
One gawps nonetheless at its breadth and ambition. It's<b> a transnational tour de force that squeezes and expands time like an accordion</b>, or a pair of lungs .. . . with its accumulation of small, logistical details of life - meals, sleep, sex, transportation, the bathroom, excursions, paperwork, rules, differences in electrical outlets - <b>it demands, and delivers</b>
- Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
<b>A richly introspective book</b>
- Akanksha Singh, Los Angeles Review of Books
<b>A powerful novel that can be compared to those of Jonathan Franzen</b>
Der Spiegel
As in Jonathan Franzen's <i>The Corrections</i>, the lives of three siblings form the narrative framework. And, <b>like Franzen, so much of the present fits within this framework that <i>The Sisters</i> could be described as an 'everything novel', to use Salman Rushdie's phrase. </b>It's about the racial violence of the nineties and contemporary Gansta rap; about New York as a destination of longing and a bizarre place of solitude during the pandemic; about Kurdish weddings and Tunisian relatives; about a fighter jet crash over Södermalm, an overcrowded Edward Said reading at Stockholm University, and the formative power of family myths. <b>The real protagonist is great, almighty time, which is pushing us all through our respective lives</b>, increasingly quickly the older we get, which is why the chapters get progressively shorter: we experience the year 2000, then a month in 2013, a week at the beginning of the pandemic, a day in 2022, and a minute in 2035, in which the true nature of the curse that weighs down the lives of the three sisters is revealed. . . . The postmodern techniques are more than just autofictional revelries and dusty identity tricks. <b>Deep within these furious pages, there's a very existential connection between Jonas and Evelyn</b>. And here, in the text, at least, the magic that Ina yearned for, back then with Hector's parents, is achieved: that <b>even the complicated and muddled chaos of the sisters' lives can be transformed into a large, independent story, with a beginning, middle and end. And maybe even a happy ever after.</b>
Süddeutsche Zeitung
<b>It's been a while since we were stunned by an ambitious family saga, </b>but the Swedish author's 637-page doorstopper is <b>a real winner</b>
- Best Books of 2025, The Times
If the novel has an overarching question it's whether turning your life into a story can really help you to survive it . . . [Khemiri] knows when to tell and when to show, when the narrator should write a disturbing letter and when to have one sister slam another one's head against a frog tank. But ultimately it's a character-driven piece, with memorable women, each of whom possess a well-stocked cabinet of fears and insecurities. Ina, who is never able to relax, is particularly well drawn. In her we have <b>the most poignant - and hilarious - depiction of a highly strung older sibling I've come across in contemporary fiction</b>. It's almost too painful to read the passages in which her sisters mock her . . . <i>The Sisters </i>is <b>the most tender, funny and engrossing family saga I've read since <i>The Bee Sting</i></b>, Paul Murray's mosaic-like account of one family's doom. <b>It's ambitious, it's full of life, it's a triumph. It's the big baggy novel I've been waiting for </b><b>-</b><b> perfect for a summer holiday</b>
- Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times
[An] <b>immersive epic saga </b>. . . the multidimensional layers, its honesty and rawness, make it <b>a triumph</b>. The pleasure is in the writing and the fascinating lives Khemiri constructs. Like its structure, time with this novel flies.
- Charleen Hurtubise, Irish Times
<b>One of the most enjoyable books I've read so far in 2025 </b>is Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri's <i>The Sisters. </i><b>This is a must-read for fans of Jonathan Franzen or Paul Murray's <i>The Bee Sting</i></b>. It tells the story of the Mikkolas sisters, three Swedish-Tunisian siblings, and the mysterious curse they believe hangs over their family. Even at over 600 pages, <b>the book feels like a page-turner</b>, due in part to Khemiri's use of in-built mystery and short pacy chapters normally found in a thriller, but mostly due to the captivating characters which populate this epic family drama. Khemiri is a literary superstar in his native Sweden - this is his first novel that he has written in English. <b>If you are looking for one to put aside for long winter nights, this is it.</b>
- Edel Coffey, The Gloss
The Times
'One of this summer's most buzzed-about novels'
Financial Times
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE SUMMER BY THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, VULTURE, BOSTON GLOBE, AND BBC
'A triumph'
Irish Times
'One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage'
New Yorker
'I really loved this book . . . a novel to sink into'
New York Times
'One of the most enjoyable books I've read so far in 2025 . . . a page turner'
The Gloss
'Superb . . . one of those books you live inside and miss when it's over'
Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost
'A moving appraisal of family, language, and the spiritual developments that accrue over a life'
Raven Leilani, author of Luster
'A thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love'
Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove
'If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you'
Tess Gunty, author of the Rabbit Hutch
'Astonishing . . . every character - every sentence - is startlingly, indubitably alive'
Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
'His masterpiece . . . life overflows its pages'
Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
MEET THE MIKKOLA SISTERS: INA, EVELYN, AND ANASTASIA.
Their mother is a Tunisian saleswoman, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she's dragged to a New Year's party by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following them from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. His life intersects with the sisters across decades and continents, from Stockholm to Tunis and New York. When Evelyn disappears, it's Jonas who tracks her down - and helps her to break a curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for years. But in the process, a shocking revelation changes everything.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, The Sisters is a vivid, epic family saga of the highest order - an addictively entertaining tour de force.